By Robert Reich
The Republican tax plan to be voted on this week is likely to pass. “The American people have waited 31 long years to see our broken tax code overhauled,” the leaders of the Koch’s political network insisted in a letter to members of Congress, urging swift approval.
They added that the time had come to put “more money in the pockets of American families.”
Please. The Koch network doesn’t care a fig about the pockets of American families. It cares about the pockets of the Koch network.
It has poured money into almost every state in an effort to convince Americans that the tax cut will be good for them. Yet most Americans don’t believe it.
Polls shows only about a third of Americans favor the tax plan. The vast majority feel it’s heavily skewed to the rich and big businesses – which it is.
In counties that Trump won but Obama carried in 2012, only 17 percent say they expect to pay less in taxes, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Another 25 percent say they expected their family would actually pay higher taxes.
Most Americans know that the tax plan is payback for major Republican donors. Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead economic advisor, even conceded in an interview that “the most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”
Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted “my donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.'”
Senator Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans failed to pass the tax plan, “the financial contributions will stop.”
By passing it, Republican donors will save billions – paying a lower top tax rate, doubling the amount their heirs can receive tax-free, and treating themselves as “pass-through” businesses able to deduct 20 percent of their income (effectively allowing Trump to cut his tax rate in half, if and when he pays taxes).
They’ll make billions more as their stock portfolios soar because corporate taxes are slashed.
The biggest winners by far will be American oligarchs such as the Koch brothers; Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor; Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate; Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets football team and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune; and Carl Icahn, the activist investor.
The oligarchs are the richest of the richest 1 percent. They’ve poured hundreds of millions into the GOP and Trump. Half of all contributions to the first phase of the 2016 election came from just 158 families, along with the companies they own or control.
The giant tax cut has been their core demand from the start. They also want to slash regulations, repeal the Affordable Care Act, and cut everything else government does except for defense – including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
In return, they have agreed to finance Trump and the GOP, and mount expensive public relations campaigns that magnify their lies.
Trump has fulfilled his end of the bargain. He’s blinded much of his white working-class base to the reality of what’s happening by means of his racist, xenophobic rants and policies.
The American oligarchs couldn’t care less about what all this will cost America.
Within their gated estates and private jets, they’re well insulated from the hatefulness and divisiveness.
They don’t worry about whether Social Security or Medicare will be there for them in their retirement because they’ve put away huge fortunes.
Climate change doesn’t concern them because their estates are fully insured against hurricanes, floods, and wildfires.
They don’t care about public schools because their families don’t attend them. They don’t care about public transportation because they don’t use it. They don’t care about the poor because they don’t see them.
They don’t worry about the rising budget deficit because they borrow directly from global capital markets.
Truth to tell, they don’t even care that much about America because their personal and financial interests are global.
They are living in their own separate society, and they want Congress and the President to represent them, not the rest of us.
The Republican Party is their vehicle. Fox News is their voice. Trump is their champion. The new tax plan is their triumph.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
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Previously in tax scammage:
* Deepwater Horizon Settlement Comes With $5.35 Billion Tax Windfall.
* Offshoring By 29 Companies Costs Illinois $1.2 Billion Annually.
* Government Agencies Allow Corporations To Write Off Billions In Federal Settlements.
* The Gang Of 62 Vs. The World.
* How The Maker Of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing.
* $1.4 Trillion: Oxfam Exposes The Great Offshore Tax Scam Of U.S. Companies.
* How Barclay’s Turned A $10 Billion Profit Into A Tax Loss.
* Wall Street Stock Loans Drain $1 Billion A Year From German Taxpayers.
* German Finance Minister Cries Foul Over Tax Avoidance Deals.
* Prosecutor Targets Commerzbank For Deals That Dodge German Taxes.
* A Schlupfloch Here, A Schlupfloch There. Now It’s Real Money.
* How Milwaukee Landlords Avoid Taxes.
* Study: 32 Illinois Fortune 500 Companies Holding At Least $147 Billion Offshore.
* Watch Out For The Coming Tax Break Trickery.
* When A ‘Tax Bonanza’ Is Actually A Huge Corporate Tax Break.
* The Hypocrisy Of Corporate Welfare: It’s Bigger Than Trump.
* Oxfam Names World’s Worst Tax Havens Fueling ‘Global Race To Bottom.’
* Offshore Tax Havens Cost Average Illinois Small Business $5,789 A Year.
* State Tax Incentives To Corporations Don’t Work.
* GOP Tax Plan Would Give 15 Of America’s Largest Corporations A $236 Billion Tax Cut.
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Previously in carried interest, aka The Billionaire’s Loophole:
* Patriotic Millionaires Vs. Carried Interest.
* The Somewhat Surreal Politics Of A Private Equity Tax Loophole Costing Us Billions (That Obama Refused To Close Despite Pledging To Do So).
* Fact-Checking Trump & Clinton On The Billionaire’s Tax Break.
* Despite Trump Campaign Promise, Billionaires’ Tax Loophole Survives Again.
* Carried Interest Reform Is a Sham.
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Previously in the Paradise Papers:
* ‘Paradise Papers’ Reveal Tax Avoidance, Shady Dealings Of World’s Rich And Powerful.
* Just How Much Money Is Held Offshore? Hint: A SHIT-TON.
* Development Dreams Lost In The Offshore World.
* Keeping Offshore ‘Hush Hush,’ But Why?
* Tax Havens Are Alive With The Sound Of Music.
* Today In Tax Avoidance Of The Ultra-Wealthy.
* Go To Town With This Offshore Leaks Database.
* The Paradise Papers: The View From Africa And Asia.
* The Paradise Papers: The End Of Elusion For PokerStars.
* The Paradise Papers: An Odd Call From The Bermuda Government.
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Previously in the Panama Papers:
* The Panama Papers: Remarkable Global Media Collaboration Cracks Walls Of Offshore Tax Haven Secrecy.
* The Panama Papers: Prosecutors Open Probes.
* The [Monday] Papers.
* Adventures In Tax Avoidance.
* Mossack Fonseca’s Oligarchs, Dictators And Corrupt White-Collar Businessmen.
* Jonathan Pie, TV Reporter! They’re All In It Together.
* Meet The Panama Papers Editor Who Handled 376 Reporters In 80 Countries.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on December 19, 2017